Growing risk of AI images<\/p>\n
Norton vice-president of Asia-Pacific and father of two Mark Gorrie said many parents have done everything they can to teach their kids how to stay safe online.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve put the safeguards in place: \u2018Don\u2019t reply to messages from strangers.\u2019 \u2018Be suspicious if a profile picture looks off.\u2019 \u2018Question anything with clumsy wording,\u2019\u201d Gorrie said.<\/p>\n
He said many parents have spent years building an instinct for spotting what\u2019s wrong, but AI was taking that instinct away.<\/p>\n
The study found 44% of parents were not confident their child could tell AI-generated content from the real thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cA harmless photo your child posted can be altered, passed on and turned into leverage,\u201d Gorrie warned.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the platforms they use every day, a convincing fake can pose as someone they trust or an official account.<\/p>\n
Among children playing chat-enabled games, 49% have chatted with a stranger. <\/p>\n
He said the old giveaways for false content, such as clumsy grammar and grainy images, had gone. <\/p>\n
The Norton insights report found 79% of parents felt their child was being exposed to inappropriate content on social media too early.<\/p>\n
Sextortion and abuse <\/p>\n
The report said criminals were increasingly using AI-generated photos or fake identities to gain a young person\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n
It said these fake images could also be used to manipulate children into sharing real images, which could then be used for financial sextortion.<\/p>\n
Last year, New Zealand enforcement agencies received more than 20,000 reports of online child sexual exploitation and abuse linked to New Zealand from the US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.<\/p>\n
This was a 29% jump from 2024. <\/p>\n
Hidden risks of gaming<\/p>\n
Parents identified TikTok (15%) as their top platform of concern, with Snapchat in second at 13%, but social media sites weren\u2019t the only concern.<\/p>\n
Parents were also worried about the gaming world. Of the children who played chat-enabled games, 49% have chatted with a stranger via voice or text.<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial media gets the attention, but plenty of this is happening in the chat layer sitting on top of gaming,\u201d Gorrie said.<\/p>\n
He said many parents may perceive games as a place where kids are \u201cjust having fun\u201d, so it was easy for caregivers to let their guard down.<\/p>\n
Parents identified TikTok (15%) as their top platform of concern. <\/p>\n
The report found 22% of parents whose children gamed said their child has received inappropriate or offensive messages.<\/p>\n
Of even greater concern, 17% said their child had been encouraged to leave the game and continue a conversation on a different platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a child moves from a game platform to a private messaging app because someone asked them to, that escalation can be hard to detect and kids may not recognise it as something worth mentioning,\u201d Gorrie said.<\/p>\n
The study found a gap in parental comfort levels around speaking to their children about risks and the behaviours their children actually engaged in.<\/p>\n
It found that 32% of parents reported their kids had gone on their device past their bedtime and 12% reported their children watched explicit content. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe gap … does not mean conversations aren\u2019t happening, but it does suggest that having the talk is only part of the picture,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
It said that conversations used to focus on strangers, passwords and screen time but now have expanded to include AI-generated images, digital impersonation, online relationships and critical thinking.<\/p>\n